[extropy-chat] fermi's paradox: m/d approach

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Matthew Gingell <gingell at gnat.com> wrote:
> Robert J. Bradbury writes:
>  >  The solar systems of advanced civilizations can probably contain
>  > >2^50 bits and one doesn't transmit a useful fraction of that
>  > across interstellar distances cheaply.
> 
>  We can think about the problem of optimally utilizing all the
>  resources available to a civilization as a data encoding problem.
> The goal is to most efficiently transmit into the future whatever
> content it is that distinguishes your civilization from vacuum across
> mass and energy modeled as bandwidth on a Shannon-style noisy
channel.
>  (Noise in this analogy would be be quantum effects and classical
>  uncertainty at various scales.) The solution is necessarily not
>  compressible, necessarily completely impenetrable to reductive
>  analysis.

This describes the conundrum that Spike was talking about. A particular
civilization may get itself into an informational bottleneck in
transmitting its population out into the universe, just as we risk a
material resources bottleneck in this century in getting our carcasses
off the planet. If the singularity sputters, the future is doomed to a
luddites collectivist agrarian fantasy. If an Mbrain civilization
expands its demands for processing resources faster than its ability to
build transmission resources, it will eventually trap itself in its own
solar system by informational overpopulation.

Thus, I foresee this Mbrain dillemma as a possible Second
Singularity... the prophet Mike has spoken...

=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                       - Gen. John Stark
"Fascists are objectively pro-pacifist..."
                                       - Mike Lorrey
Do not label me, I am an ism of one...
Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com

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